Chapter 5: Systems Development and Program Change Activities Flashcards
___________________ are systems analysts, systems engineers, and programmers. These individuals actually build the system. They gather facts about problems with the current system, analyze these facts, and formulate a solution to solve the problems. The product of their efforts is a new system.
Systems Professionals
____________________ are those for whom the system is built. There are many of these at all levels in an organization.
End Users
During systems development, systems professionals work with the ______________ to obtain an understanding of the users’ problems and a clear statement of their needs.
primary users
__________________ are individuals either within or outside the organization who have an interest in the system but are not end users. These include accountants, internal and external auditors, and the internal steering committee that oversees systems development.
Stakeholders
______________________ are those professionals who address the controls, accounting, and auditing issues for systems development. This involvement should include internal auditors and IT auditors.
Accountants/Auditors
Accountants are involved in systems development in three ways. These are:
- First, accountants are users. All systems that process financial transactions impact the accounting function in some way.
- Second, accountants participate in systems development as members of the development team. Their involvement often extends beyond the development of strictly AIS applications.
- Accountants are involved in systems development as auditors. Accounting information systems must be auditable.
Organizations usually acquire information systems in two ways:
(1) they develop customized systems in-house through formal systems development activities and
(2) they purchase commercial systems from software vendors. This section of the text discusses these two alternatives.
These firms design their own information systems through in-house systems development activities. ____________________ requires maintaining a full-time systems staff of analysts and programmers who identify user information needs and satisfy their needs with custom systems.
In-House Development
SDLC stands for
Software Development Life Cycle
A growing number of systems are purchased from software vendors. Faced with many competing packages, each with unique features and attributes, management must choose the system and the vendor that best serve the needs of the organization. Making the optimal choice requires that this be an informed decision. This is a _______________.
Commercial Systems
Four factors have stimulated the growth of the commercial software market:
(1) the relatively low cost of general commercial software as compared to customized software;
(2) the emergence of industry-specific vendors;
(3) a growing demand from businesses that are too small to
afford in-house systems’ development staff; and
(4) the trend toward downsizing of organizational units
Commercial software packages fall
into three basic groups:
- turnkey systems
- backbone systems
- vendor-supported
systems.
_____________ are completely finished and tested systems that
are ready for implementation. These are often general-purpose systems or systems customized to a specific industry. ______________ are usually sold only as compiled program modules, and users have limited ability to customize them to their specific needs.
Turnkey systems
___________________ are designed to serve a wide variety of user needs. By mass-producing a standard system, the vendor is able to reduce the unit cost of these systems to a fraction of in-house development costs.
General Accounting Systems.
To provide as much flexibility as possible, _______________ are designed in modules. This allows users to purchase the modules that meet their specific needs. Typical modules include accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll processing, inventory control, general ledger, financial reporting, and fixed asset.
General accounting systems
Some software vendors create ______________________
that target selected segments of the economy. For example, the medical field, the banking industry, and government agencies have unique accounting procedures, rules, and conventions that general-purpose accounting systems do not always accommodate. Software vendors have thus developed standardized systems to deal with industry-specific
procedures.
Special-Purpose Systems.
_______________________ are computer systems that improve the productivity of office workers. Examples include word processing packages, database management systems, spreadsheet programs,
and desktop publishing systems.
Office Automation Systems.
_________________ provide a basic system structure on which to build. These systems come with all the primary processing modules programmed. The vendor designs and programs the user interface to suit the client’s needs.
Backbone Systems.
These systems are hybrids of custom systems and commercial software. Under this approach, the vendor develops (and maintains) custom systems for its clients. The systems themselves are custom products, but the systems development service is commercially provided. This option is popular in the health care and legal services industries.
Vendor-Supported Systems.
The three advantages of commercial software:
- Implementation of Time - commercial software can be implemented almost immediately once a need is recognized.
- Cost - The cost of commercial software is spread across many users; the unit cost is reduced
to a fraction of the cost of a system developed in-house. - Reliability - Most reputable commercial software packages are thoroughly tested before their release to the consumer market.
The three disadvantages of commercial software:
- Vendor Dependence - Purchasing a vendor-supported system makes the firm dependent on the vendor for maintenance.
- The need for customized systems - Sometimes, the user’s needs are unique and complex, and commercially available software is either too general or too inflexible.
- Maintenance - Business information systems undergo frequent changes. If the user’s needs change, it may be difficult or even impossible to modify commercial software.
The phases of SDLC are:
- Systems Planning
- Systems Analysis
- Conceptual Design
- Systems Selection
- Detailed Design
- Programming and Testing
- Implementation
- New Systems Development
- Systems Maintenance
The objective of systems planning is to:
to link individual system projects or applications to the strategic objectives of the firm
Who should do Systems Planning?
Steering Committee - The composition of the steering committee may include the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer,
the chief information officer, senior management from user areas, the internal auditor, and senior management from computer services.
Typical responsibilities for a steering committee include the following:
- Resolving conflicts that arise from new systems
- Reviewing projects and assigning priorities
- Budgeting funds for systems development
- Reviewing the status of individual projects under development
- Determining at various checkpoints throughout the SDLC whether to continue with the project or terminate it
Systems planning occurs at two levels:
strategic systems planning and project planning.
_________________ involves the allocation of systems resources at the macro level. It usually deals with a time frame of 3 to 5 years. This process is similar to budgeting resources for other strategic activities, such as product development, plant expansions, market research, and manufacturing technology
Strategic systems planning
There are four justifications for strategic systems planning:
- A plan that changes constantly is better than no plan at all.
- Strategic planning reduces the crisis component in systems development
- Strategic systems planning provides authorization control for the SDLC
- Cost management.
This is a level of systems planning whose purpose is to allocate resources to individual applications within the framework of the strategic plan. This involves identifying areas of user needs, preparing proposals, evaluating each proposal’s feasibility and contribution to the business
plan, prioritizing individual projects, and scheduling the work to be done.
Project Planning
The product of the project planning phase consists of two formal documents:
the project proposal and the project
schedule.
The _______________ provides management with a basis for deciding whether to proceed with the project.
Project Proposal
The ________________ represents management’s commitment to the project. It is a budget of the time and costs for all the phases of the SDLC.
Project Schedule
This is the second phase of SDLC. ____________________ is a two-step process involving first a survey of the current system and then an analysis of the user’s needs. A business problem must be fully understood by the systems analyst before he or she can formulate a solution.
Systems analysis
Most systems are not developed from scratch. Usually, some form of information system and related procedures are currently in place. The analyst often begins the analysis by determining what elements, if any, of the current system should be preserved as part of the new system. This involves a rather detailed ______________.
system survey
Disadvantages of Surveying the Current System:
- Current physical tar pit - This term is used to describe the tendency on the part of the analyst to be “sucked in” and then “bogged down” by the task of surveying the current dinosaur system.
- Thinking inside the box. - By studying and modeling the old system, the analyst may develop a constrained notion about how the new system should function. The result is an improved old system rather than a radically new approach.
Advantages of Surveying the Current System
- Identifying what aspects of the old system should be kept.
- Forcing systems analysts to fully understand the system.
- Isolating the root of problem symptoms
A system fact that includes external entities, such as customers or vendors, as well as internal sources from other departments.
Data sources.
A system fact that include both managers and operations users
Users.
A system fact that comprise of the files, databases, accounts, and source documents used in the system.
Data stores.
A system fact that involves processing tasks that are manual or computer operations that represent a decision or an action triggered by information.
Processes.
System facts that are represented by the movement of documents and reports between data sources, data stores, processing tasks, and users. They can also be represented in UML diagrams.
Data flows.
These are system facts that include both accounting and operational controls and may be manual procedures or computer controls.
Controls
Understanding the characteristics of ___________________________ and its rate of growth are important elements in assessing capacity requirements for the new system.
Transaction volumes
As a system reaches capacity, _______________ increase to an intolerable level. Although no system
is perfect, the analyst must determine the acceptable error tolerances for the new
system.
Error rates.
These are the resources used by the current system that nclude the costs of labor, computer time, materials (such as invoices), and direct overhead
Resource costs.
Delays may be caused by ________________ such as unnecessary approvals or sign-offs
redundant operations
In fact gathering for surveys, systems analysts employ several techniques to gather the previously cited facts. Commonly used techniques include:
observation
task participation
personal interview
reviewing key documents.
A fact-gathering technique that involves passively watching the physical procedures of the system. This allows the analyst to determine what gets done, who performs the tasks, when they do them, how they do them, why they do them, and how long they take.
Observation.
This is a fact-gathering technique that is an extension of observation, whereby the analyst takes an active role in performing the user’s work. This allows the analyst to experience first-hand the problems involved in the operation of the current system.
Task Participation
A fact-gathering technique that is a method of extracting facts about the current system and user perceptions about the requirements for the new system. The instruments used to gather these facts may be open-ended questions or formal questionnaires.
Personal Interviews.
A fact-gathering technique that is a method of extracting facts about the current system and user perceptions about the requirements for the new system. The instruments used to gather these facts may be open-ended questions or formal questionnaires.
Personal Interviews.
This instrument used in an interview allows users to elaborate on the problem as they see it and offer suggestions and recommendations. Answers to these questions tend to be difficult to analyze, but they give the analyst a feel for the scope of the problem
Open-ended questions
An instrument used in interviews that are used to ask more specific, detailed questions and to restrict the
user’s responses. This is a good technique for gathering objective facts about the nature of specific procedures, volumes of transactions processed, sources of data, users
of reports, and control issues.
Questionnaires
____________________ is an intellectual process that is commingled with fact gathering. The
analyst is simultaneously analyzing as he or she gathers facts. The mere recognition of a problem presumes some understanding of the norm or desired state. It is therefore difficult to identify where the survey ends and the analysis begins.
Systems analysis
